DATE: Sunday, July 6, 1997 TAG: 9707030225 SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER LENGTH: 246 lines
TINY AI SAKAKIBARA tries in vain to run while balancing a tennis ball on a racket.
Ten-year-old Yuichi Shimotani cranes his head to the side, striving to be the first to snag a doughnut suspended from a flagpole with his mouth.
Their mothers and fathers join in the relay races, climbing inside brown corrugated cardboard cylinders and racing like hamsters in enormous treadmills toward the finish line. Children run alongside their parents, shouting to make their cheers heard above the brassy beat of the Strauss waltzes and polkas blaring from the field-house loudspeaker.
The rules at Japanese field day, known as Undokai, seem simple. The sillier, the better.
Japanese families from all over Southeastern Virginia came together in Newport News recently for this annual sporting ritual. It is one small, noisy way in which transplanted Japanese families re-create the culture of their native country, thousands of miles away.
Nearly 100 families have moved temporarily to Hampton Roads to work for Japanese manufacturing companies located here, such as Canon Corp. of Virginia in Newport News and the Chesapeake-based Mitsubishi Chemical of America Inc., Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of America and Yupo Corp. Most Japanese employees stay three to eight years. Some executives return for two or three tours of duty before their children even finish high school.
While many Japanese employees speak some English, their wives often know only Japanese. Their children learn English in school, usually attending additional Japanese classes on Saturday at the Newport News Japanese School, held in the Hampton Roads Academy school building. Field day is the highlight of the Japanese School year.
For the children, who had little or no say in their parents' decision, the move to America can be a difficult transition. Some, however, are taking to their adopted country with more enthusiasm than their parents anticipated.
Parents watch as their sons and daughters begin to substitute English words in Japanese sentences, to prefer American cartoons to Japanese calligraphy and to favor french fries over noodles and rice. Many parents wonder how their children will ever be able to adjust to life back home.
Hisako Sakakibara's two children, daughter Ai and son Makato, 7, are forgetting their Japanese, in spite of attending weekly Japanese classes at the Newport News school.
``It's very hard to keep Japanese for kids,'' says Sakakibara, who moved to Chesapeake four years ago because of her husband's job at Mitsubishi. ``It's very easy for them to just speak English. . . . For my son, Japan is another country. This is his country.''
Raising one family between two cultures is a delicate balancing act, parents say. Often, the move affects each member of the family differently.
Ten-year-old Yuichi Shimotani holds his brush carefully, tracing long, black, wet lines of Japanese calligraphy in a notebook in his living room.
But not for long.
Yuichi is quickly bombarded by little brother Akira, who rumbles into the room in search of his hamster named Minnie Mouse. Akira, 8, is newly freed from his after-school English tutor. Both boys attend public school in Newport News, where they live, but spend extra time every day studying Japanese.
``This is my favorite part,'' Akira cackles, grinning from ear to ear in anticipation. ``Bombs away, Minnie!'' He drops the hamster into a hollow plastic exercise toy. His hamster, he explains, is American.
``She never talks; she just makes noises,'' Akira says. The hamster is much more fun than his late goldfish, named Butthead after the American cartoon.
Yuichi returns to his studies.
Ten minutes later, the younger boy returns, joyously hopping on one foot, the other foot jammed in a shiny plastic inline skate. ``Mom, I have a question,'' Akira calls in English, knowing full well that his mother Naoko is talking to a visitor in Japanese. ``How do I get this off?''
Naoko Shimotani speaks almost no English. Her husband, who works for Canon, does not know much more. He has little time to see his children during the week. Like most other Japanese executives, he works full days through two international time zones, reporting to the office at 7 or 7:30 a.m., often not returning before midnight.
Their husbands' long hours mean that Japanese mothers bear most of the responsibility for child care, Naoko Shimotani says.
Her older son speaks English well enough to occasionally serve as her interpreter, but prefers Japanese. Yuichi is old enough to remember living in Japan.
Akira Shimotani, who has lived in Virginia half his life, is the most Americanized member of the family.
``Their first language here is English,'' Naoko Shimotani says through an interpreter. Pointing to Akira, she adds, ``He's losing the Japanese language. If we stay here, we have to stay until he goes to college, so he can go to university here.''
Sumitomo's Ken Nakamura does not mind his long hours. His 12-hour work days are shorter than most business days in Japan, he says.
Tamotsu Ominami's job at Sumitomo allows him to spend several hours a week studying with his children. He tutors his three children for between an hour and four hours an evening. While he tries to teach his children Japanese, he also enjoys learning about America from them.
``I'm very interested in American history,'' says Ominami, who has lived in Chesapeake for about a year. ``That's what makes me motivated to teach these kids. I can learn about American history through their textbooks.''
In spite of the challenges, things are easier for these families now than they once were, Naoko Shimotani says.
``The company usually gives families five years,'' Naoko Shimotani says. ``That's better. It used to be that they were only here a couple years. As soon as they got used to it here, they had to leave.''
Each of Yoko Nakamura's children has adjusted differently to life in America. She lives in Chesapeake, where husband Ken works for Sumitomo. Her three children attend public schools in Great Bridge, where many Sumitomo families live.
Recently, Yoko Nakamura assisted a Japanese intern teacher, who visited Great Bridge Intermediate School for one year, instructing her son's classmates in traditional Japanese folk dancing. Yoko Nakamura and Hisako Sakakibara helped dress the girls in traditional Japanese costumes. They spent hours patiently tying large, colorful scarves around the kimonos of a dozen wriggling, chattering children.
The mothers didn't mind the trouble. They were hoping to repay the kindness of their American friends, by teaching their children's classmates about Japanese culture.
Yoko Nakamura hoped her son might learn something, too. Tohru Nakamura is only 10, but he has already forgotten much of what he once knew about his country.
``This is the first time I have done folk dancing in yukata,'' a special kind of kimono, Tohru told the teacher. ``I didn't like it. I don't like dancing. I prefer to draw fast cars.''
For all his talk, Tohru has not adjusted to life in Chesapeake as well as his older sisters, Akane, 13, and Elie, 16. All three were born in New Jersey, during their father's first extended stay in the United States at another Sumitomo plant. After returning to Japan shortly after Tohru was born, the family moved to Virginia three years ago.
``My younger children, I don't think they have many friends yet,'' says Ken Nakamura. ``They came here at a very marginal age to get socialized. They were old enough to know what was going on, but not really old enough to understand why they had to go through this ordeal.''
His two younger children still struggle with English, as with American culture. His oldest child, Elie, has spent half her life in Japan, half in the United States. She now relishes her status as an international traveler.
``When I go back to visit, everyone there is like, `Oh, you're American, say something in English,' '' Elie says in fluid, unaccented English. ``Everyone there wants to be American.''
But the transition was not always smooth, Elie says.
She was raised speaking English, she says, and knew hardly any Japanese when her family moved home when she was 6. By the time her family returned to the United States seven years later, however, she had forgotten all of her English.
``It was hard to relearn English,'' Elie says. ``Really hard.''
Now fluent in both languages, she is determined to continue with English language classes even after she ultimately returns to Japan for college.
At 16, Elie's choice of career - fashion design - is clear from her dress. Her naturally straight black hair is stylishly cut.
And highlighted blue.
Last week, it was streaked purple. At the field day exercises, she wears jeans, a bright orange T-shirt, an orange patterned blouse and metallic blue nail polish.
Yoko Nakamura is surprised that her daughter has chosen a career path so young. Most Japanese wait until the middle of college to make career decisions, she says.
But Elie says she is uninterested in following the crowd.
``In Japan, everyone wants to be the same,'' Elie says. ``But here, everyone wants to be different. The first thing I noticed when I got here is that everybody has different color hair, different color eyes, different color skin. In Japan, you know, everyone has straight, black hair. But they all dye it brown. If I were there, I'd probably be dying my hair brown, too. That's why I'm keeping my hair like this.''
Her parents are different here, too, she says.
``I think my parents are cooler here than in Japan,'' Elie says. ``They wouldn't let me dye my hair like this if I was in Japan. In Japan, you can get kicked out of school for this, so they wouldn't let me.''
Ken Nakamura shrugs off his daughter's changing hair colors. As a father, he says, he picks his battles.
``I'm probably a little less conservative than the average Japanese,'' Nakamura says. ``I don't want to be foolish'' by being too strict on minor issues, he says. ``Here, everyone dyes their hair. It's not so different. Maybe if you're very conservative, that could be different.''
While her older daughter has passed through the most difficult years of adolescence, Yoko Nakamura worries that her younger children may have a more difficult road. They will need to work to catch up with their Japanese classmates in school.
Japanese schools are famous for their rigor. Japanese children attend 280 days of school a year, compared with 180 in the United States. In addition, both public and private school teachers take for granted that their students will also attend ``juku,'' or cram school, in the afternoons, Yoko Nakamura says.
Some private Japanese schools in larger cities offer special transition programs for children who have grown up outside the country, she says. Hisako Sakakibara and Yoko Nakamura both plan to send their kids to transition programs.
``It will be difficult for him to get accustomed to life in Japan again,'' says Masako Miyamoto, a Japanese intern teacher who assists Tohru's teacher at Great Bridge Intermediate School. ``Japanese culture is concerned with doing the same thing. When one person has a special personality, it's not acceptable. Here, the society promotes individuality. If you're different, that's great.''
Many parents worry that their children will no longer fit in with other Japanese kids.
Hisako Sakakibar's children will have to rein in their personalities when they return to Japan in order to avoid being ostracized, she says.
``They will have to force themselves to be more like the other kids,'' Hisako Sakakibara says. ``There's a lot of bullying psychologically of the kids who are different. Right now they are Americanized, so they stand out.''
Ken Ezoe's stays in the United States have changed his family forever.
``I have three kinds of cultures in my family now,'' says Ezoe, a vice president at Sumitomo who lives in Chesapeake.
Ezoe's oldest child was unable to readjust to Japanese life. Ezoe took his family to New Jersey when his son was 5 years old. They returned to Japan when the boy was 12.
It did not go well.
By the time they returned home, Ezoe's son had lost most of his Japanese. He changed schools three times in three years. Finally, for the benefit of his family, Ezoe decided to take them back to the United States. His son now attends Virginia Tech. One of his daughters attends Old Dominion University. His youngest daughter goes to Great Bridge High School.
``Fortunately, my boss told me, `Hey, we could use you over there, why don't you go back,''' Ezoe says. ``Now, my son is American. He has a green card. He can work. I think he will never go back to Japan.''
Ezoe's younger children are more comfortable with Japanese culture. His older daughter intends to transfer to a Japanese university after a couple of years at ODU, and eventually find work as an English teacher in Japan. Ezoe's younger daughter plans to attend a Japanese university.
Like Elie Nakamura, Ezoe's youngest child forgot all the English she learned during her stay in Japan. Unlike her brother, this child identifies herself as Japanese.
``She loves sushi, sashimi, karoke,'' Ezoe says. ``My son hates that. He tells me, `I can't eat that food.' ''
Ezoe doesn't flinch at the idea that someday he will be transferred back to Japan - without his son.
``There comes a time when human beings are separated,'' Ezoe says. ``People have to go their separate ways. That's international life. Life is getting global. I'm very happy to spend some time in Japan, then tell my friends I'm going to America for a month to visit my son.'' ILLUSTRATION: STAFF COLOR PHOTOS BY MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Akira Shimotani, 8, of Newport News is tutored in English by Claire
Carbonneau....
Akira Shimotani, 8, left, has lived in Virginia half his life....His
older brother, Yuichi, 11...
Stephanie Butcher helps classmate Tohru Nakamura...
Yosuke Ominami leads other children...
Ai Sakakibara, center...From left are Courtney Westphal, Kayla
Harris, Shannon Gedney and Charreau...
Tamotsu Ominami, left, helps his children Haruka, center, and
Yosuke... KEYWORDS: JAPAN CHILDREN
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